But I think the problem in Iraq isn't that the soldier shouldn't have non-lethal options. Its that the soldier shouldn't be a cop (special forces, etc. notwithstanding.)
Absolutely. The lack of trained MPs has been one of the major criticisms I've had of the Iraq plan ever since the conventional war ended. Of course Rummy wasn't expecting to actually have to stick around long enough to do police work, so why should he need MPs?/forehead slap
I do agree that the Iraqi government is unable to keep any semblance of order right now.
Unable or unwilling? When we tried to stop the killings being perpetrated by Madhi Army militias, we were rebuked by Maliki, who depends on Sadr for political support and whose own party has the Badr Brigade militia which has also been accused of sectarian killing. The government is part of the problem not in the sense of incompetence but in the sense of complicity.
I have no problems ousting Hussein from power, it should have been done long ago.
The ideal time to do it would have been right after Gulf War I, when we told the people of Iraq that we would help them if they revolted against Saddam. An actual rebellion supported by the U.S. would have been a billion times better than an invasion by our military, because it truly would have put us in the role of savior rather than occupier. Sort of the difference between France helping the Colonial Army substantially in deafating the British, versus the French Army landing on shore and taking over, promising to eventually let us set up our own government.
Hindsight is 20/20, can't change the past, I know, I know, but the point is there was a time and a place and we missed it. 2003 was not the right time, it was in many ways the worst possible time. For example, it diverted us from Afghanistan, a much better and more important mission. After we were successful in Afghanistan and had pulled our troops out, both freeing up our resources and proving to the world that we could actually do what we said we could do, then we should have considered Iraq.
Leaving right now, I believe, will make Iraq much more of a bloodbath than it already is. Surely, there have been many mistakes, but there is no reason to just add another one to it.
I agree completely that leaving now will cause the violence to get much worse, and thus I am unable to support bringing the troops home immediately.
Here's the problem:
I have seen nothing -- certainly not Bush's "surge" plan which amounts to "stay the course, only harder" -- that will make the statement "leaving now will cause the violence to get much worse" untrue in one year, two years, or ten years.
So I'm starting to lose patience. I'm starting to think that the only thing that will change in however many years we stay is that the body count will be higher and the sectarian hatred even more entrenched. It's starting to seem that no matter what the U.S. is going to have a long post-vietnam-like period of recovery and Iraq is going to have a civil war with its own decades or more of recovery. Unless real hope for success appears, then it only makes sense to start this sooner rather than later. Otherwise we're only building up pressure behind the dam that is going to break eventually no matter what.
You are extremely naive if you think it comes down to that simple binary choice.
Hint: Consider cases where someone would not use lethal force, but would be willing to use non-lethal high-pain-inflicting force. In law enforcement, that's a larger percentage of cases than where lethal force is used -- even if the non-lethal weapon isn't available.
I'm going to guess you are now going to oppose spoons being allowed to the military.
That's because you're a fool who hasn't listened to a word that I've said.
I oppose spoons being given to the military for the express purpose of being used as torture devices. The day I see riot police brandishing spoons and threatening to harm protestors with them is the day your argument makes a god-damn lick of sense.
This weapon is not some random tool like a tape measure or a screwdriver that could hypothetically be re-purposed for torture, it is a torture device as designed and when used as intended. That is its function -- inflicting pain on human beings en mass and from a distance.
For cops, lethal weapons are used rarely (or supposed to be...) and subdued means constrained by handcuffs... for a soldier subdued means dead.
That's a fine point, but in Iraq our soldiers have become de-facto cops by necessity. And they have certainly subdued plenty of people without killing them; we aren't filling the detention centers with corpses. This is good because we're trying to establish order and you don't do that by shooting anyone who steals a pair of sneakers, but it's bad because it means that we're giving this weapon to people who lack the training a traditional police officer gets that at least in theory would make them more reluctant to escalate to a pain-inflicting device. If they're used to thinking in terms of lethal force, they would consider a mere pain-ray a complete non-issue and I imagine would be even more ready to use it than a police officer.
Soldiers in a battlefield are one thing -- and they probably wouldn't use this weapon. Soldiers patrolling the streets of an occupied city are no different than cops, only more heavily armed and less well trained. I don't see this weapon helping the situation.
But I'm going to put you in the "oppose any new weapon almost on principle" group I mentioned in my first post.
Because you can quibble about the word "standard"? Are you really saying this falls in the same category as soap in a sock? It's intended use is to inflict pain, and will be delivered to police and soldiers for that express purpose!
You're just putting yourself in the "pigeon hole all opponents without even reading their posts" group. "On principle" my ass. Read my post. There are legitimate reasons to be worried about a weapon like this, you're the one with the knee-jerk reaction.
I'm wondering who's the genius who thinks black ice slows vehicles.
Okay, if you deploy it in front of a turn you can make them crash, but if that's your goal sever tire damage strips or just shooting at the tires would work just as well. Or hell, shoot the driver, unless you're so confident in the general use of airbags that you consider making someone in a high speed chase crash qualifies as "non-lethal force".
Of course, we did not expect the dictator to be replaced by general chaos,
Of course there were two sets of reasoning behind the expectation, and it is the difference between them that has led to this sorry affairs.
We, the people expected that there would not be general chaos because we also expected that the military had a plan for maintaining order while working as quickly as possible to fill the power vacuum.
The architects of the war, specifically Donald Rumsfeld, expected there would not be general chaos because he also expected that a fully-formed democracy would fall from the sky, everyone would love us unconditionally, there wouldn't be an insurgency, and therefore he didn't need to have that plan thingie.
Not that everything would have been open arms and roses if we had an actual plan based in reality, but we might not be describing the situation as "general chaos". The damage done to the Iraq war by Rumsfeld is incalculable, and it doesn't matter how much better Gates is, he can't undo that damage. Bush and military leaders are talking about how we can't afford to fail. Well, sorry boys, we failed three years ago when some moron stood on a ship with a big banner that said "Mission Accomplished", and he believed it.
So your objection is that it might be used for torture? Do you also object to batteries? Water and seranwrap? A long sock with a bar of soap in it? Any tool can be misused, that doesn't detract from it's benefits.
As standard-issues police/MP armaments? FUCK YES I OBJECT. We're not talking about a generic "tool", we're talking about something specifically designed to be a weapon, given to the police for that express puprose. If a cop was caught walking around with a bar of soap in a sock, there might be some questions asked. But his microwave torture device? He's supposed to have that.
There'll be plenty of other posts on the subject, just like there were in the last article on this weapon, but I'll say it again: The difference between a lethal and non-lethal weapon is not just that you'd rather have the non-lethal weapon used on you, it's also that the police are vastly more likely to use the non-lethal weapon on you!
Especially a weapon that leaves no marks, and thus no proof after the fact that the weapon was in fact used. You don't think that'll be used more recklessly by police than their sidearm any use of which requires extensive justification and accounting for every shot fired? "Huh, those protestors said we used our microwave pain rays? They're lying! Just like they're lying about the first guy to throw a rock being a plain-clothes cop!"
This isn't someone re-purposing a bar of soap and a gym sock as a torture device -- which, if a cop was found walking around with and using, would cause some questions to be asked. This tool's benefit is the same as its downside.
No comment on whether they did the job right, they might suck at it and this could all be their fault, I'm just saying that as a practical matter they have to support the inputs that devices people will want to hook up will output. Anyone with a PS3 obviously isn't turned off by DRM on principle, and it would be foolish of Westinghouse not to support HDCP. They don't only support HDCP, they support multiple inputs, again for practical reasons. They don't seem to really care about DRM, either, other than they need it to support customers' other electronics. According to the summary:
"[Westinghouse had] one suggestion for PS3 owners with blinking Westinghouse televisions: Purchasing an HDMI to DVI adapter to bypass HDCP."
Um, WHAT?! You mean all you need to get around all this DRM HDCP is a $30 adapter? Not that DRM has ever been something that will do more than stop the most casual of pirates, but even a casual pirate could see $30 to be able to rip all the HD movies they rent from Netflix or whatever makes sense -- just like people bought $30 adapters that stripped Macrovision from VHS. Am I missing something? Tell me I am, because that's just ridiculous for all this bullshit. It'd be like an Express line at airport security where for a small fee you bypass the scanners.
At EBStop just ask for the controller. They can't leave it just lying out since it's, you know, wireless. It would be stolen within hours.
So are the xbox and ps3 controllers, but they manage to attach a cable to them so they don't walk away. It's not the same, but you should still be able to get a feel for it, but whatever, I'll ask next time I'm there.:)
You're assuming that PS3s are currently selling. Everytime I go to BB and EB they have tons of ps3s sitting under the demo machine.
Oh, I'm not assuming that, as my experience is the same. Well, I know for a fact that BB sold at least one PS3 because one day they had 12 and the next they had 11... Anyway, based on sales that seem to have dropped off sharply after Christmas, Sony could already have a price drop in the works. They just aren't going to tell us until it's weeks away.
People are either playing guitar hero on the ps2, the wii (if they have a demo), or whatever titles the xbox360 is demoing.
I haven't been anywhere that had an actual Wii demo. Just a Wii console behind plexiglass and a video about how they were going to show me a new way to play video games. Uh, okay, how about letting me actually play and see for myself? I understand people swinging controllers around is an issue, but they have DDR pads and Guitar Hero guitars in little cordoned-off sections. A little dissapointing -- I'm still going to buy one, but even with the great reviews I don't like buying it without trying it.
Oh, and i found an xbox 360 with no disc, just some Live Arcade games. I finally found what the big deal was about Geometry Wars. Smash TV on LSD, totally awesome.:)
The only place you can get non-bundled PS3s right now is supposedly Circuit City online - non of their stores have them instock.
I could walk into Best Buy right now and get one. I went one day, and they had a dozen. I returned the next day -- when a shipment of Wii was supposed to arrive -- and all the Wii had sold in an hour, but they still had 11 PS3.
Online stores do still seem to be in short supply.
The Wii was tough to find until about a week or two ago but now Wiis are everywhere.
Where do you live? All the shops around here sold out of the shipments they got at the start of the week right away, and the online store trackers are only listing Walmart as having their $650 bundle in stock. I wish it was easy to find a Wii.:(
Oh man, that's a scary thought. I can only see the stories in the Komodo Dragon New Testament, such as Komodo Dragon Jesus Feeds the 3,000... to his Disciples.
Based on recent behavior you may think that Sony isn't the brightest company in the world, but they certainly know enough to not divulge even a rumor of a price drop until said price drop is imminent. Nobody pre-announces price drops, because the first-order effect of doing so is to reduce your current sales. With PS3s sitting on the shelves, do you think they want to bring sales to a complete halt while people wait for the price break? There are probably enough people doing that already on the assumption that a price drop will occur; that would be everyone if they knew the price was going to drop at a specific point in time.
Now companies do pre-announce price drops near to the actual change, in order to get people who might also be interested in the competitor to wait for their product, but in a narrow enough time window to not significantly harm their own sales at the previous price.
So basically all this means is that Sony is definitely not dropping the price this month. In three months, if they truly aren't selling and Xbox continues to build its lead, then you'll maybe see something.
And I know of no way to purchase it from them, either.
I had a domain name I used for my website, but I let it lapse. My domain registrar was the one who started parking it, and put up the usual generic portal/search engine. And, in the upper right hand corner of the site was an url that said "Buy this domain!" I clicked on the link, and the asking price for the domain had gone from $15 to $1000.
That's right, one grand. Uh-huh. I think not. Fortunately it's just a personal website, not something I run a business from, so I had zero reason to give in to their extortion. I think the thing that bothers me so much about it is that it was my own domain registrar that did it, not some cybersquatter who saw a lapsed domain and bought it up. It was they themselves who saw the opportunity to try to rape me.
I would be fairly sure that GoDaddy is the one doing the parking, as well. It makes sense for them -- the domain has some value to someone, and why let some other squatter get the name at the normal asking price and get to play the extortion game, when they could make that money (and be more efficient at it too, as they know exactly when a domain becomes available).
My theory is that people just like killin' the bad guys so much that they don't see how easy it is for us mistake who the "bad guys" are.
Well yeah, who doesn't like killin bad guys? I used to have the same problems our government is having when I would play Team Fortress. See, the Spy class can make themselves look like any other class and any other team, and they can get inside your base and wreck havok from the inside. So what you did was any time you saw somebody and you weren't sure if they were a bad guy or not, was you shot them. If they bled, they were a bad guy. Simple enough. Kinda seems to be the tack our government is taking. They must have played Team Fortress too.
Now a kink got thrown in the works if the server had team kill enabled, because then the good guys would bleed if you shot them, too. So what you had to do then is wait for them to shoot you back. A spy can't rightly stay disguised if he's shooting, so if they shot you but didn't change teams, then they are a good guy who's pissed because you shot them. Sometimes they'd get quite mad at your false accusation, and keep shooting you until you were dead, which I suppose made them a bad guy, at least until they forgave you.
I wonder if Bush has checked the server settings on the universe.
"America will be much better off after he is gone! Anybody else would be better than him!"
Okay, Universe, I get it, I was wrong. Anybody else who isn't a fascist ass-kisser would be better than Gonzales. I expect this wish to also be perverted and for me to regret saying it three years from now...
So, basically what you're saying is that you have a hard time understanding things that aren't movies, and you get frustrated and angry as a result, but blame the thing you don't understand.
Fantastic post, and I agree completely -- though I am highly skeptical that the "end state" is a world without terrorism and genocide, partly because I'm just cynical but also because we've done such a piss-poor job of preventing it since we first said "Never Again".
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, the sad thing is, that we could combine both your very lucid statement that global security and thus military spending is necessary and good to pursue, and the GP's request that we stop spending so much money killing and instead spend it fixing our energy dependency problem in a real way.
Just by getting rid of the foolish mission -- Iraq, of course -- and diverting the same amount of money to doing as much as possible to replace fossil fuels, we could basically accomplish what the GP wanted, and still spend the necessary money for military missions that are actually worthwhile, like Afghanistan.
So we don't really have to do either-or, we just have to be smarter. Well, smarter and more concerned about our future. The other sad truth is that in peace time we would never spend Iraq-level monies on developing non-fossil energy because of the obvious strain on our governments budget and the economy such spending causes. Only war can get us to open our purses that wide...
P.S. I just wanted to congratulate Canada and Canadians on their excellent discernment in when and how to cooperate with the U.S. in the Global War on Terror -- for example, by identifying when a mission has something to do with the GWT, and when it has fuck-all to do with Terror (until after we invade and then it has a lot to do with Terror).
No, it's not--desirable end results are none of government's concern.
Well they're my concern, and unlike your hypothetical corporate-run universe, in my world the government works on my behalf. So yes, desireable end results are the governments concern.
Desirable end results are not a corporations concern, as what is desireable from the peoples' standpoint usually means less-than-ideal profit for the corporation.
Then you are pure evil and have no moral right to exist, because you are willing to endorse the wholesale violation of individual rights.
You only believe in the rights of those with the wealth to pay for them, and you're calling me evil? You endorse the wholesale enslavement of the populace in the name of corporate profit, dress it up as "individual rights" -- which to you means the right to own slaves, so long as they can be coerced into agreeing to it under pain of starvation -- and think you have a moral leg to stand on?
Lasse-Faire capitalism is the same as corporate dictatorship. One leads into the other as naturally as water running downhill. You will have no individual rights, because you will sign them away and become a slave to corporate-owned society -- or die. And this is what you wish for. Seriously, that's despicable.
That antitrust scrutiny is there for a reason, and in this case, it's very well justified.
You make some very good points and I lean toward agreeing with you, but at the same time, I'm not quite certain.
For instance, why is AM/FM radio not considered a legitimate competitor to satellite? Considered as a single "radio" market, neither XM nor Sirrius have significant marketshare, nor would they after a merger (well, I assume, I have no numbers, but I also have only one aquaintence with satellite radio). Sure it's good to have competition between satellite services, but for anyone considering purchasing either they would surely consider staying with traditional radio. Even if there was only one satellite service, it would have to make a compelling case vs cheap AM/FM radios with free service.
Whether or not monopolies are "good for consumers" is irrelevant.
It's not government's place to care.
Actually anti-trust is one of the few legitimate places for the government to care. Fixing the fundamentally broken corner-cases of capitalism is a fine use of government power.
All government needs to do is enforce contracts that any given set of individuals choose to make among themselves and arrest and punish those who initiate, attempt to initiate, or threaten to initiate physical force or fraud against the person or property of another without his consent.
Okay, maybe your idea of utopia is where all food manufacturers are bought by wal-mart and the contract you "choose" to sign with them is whatever the hell they want because your choice is to sign or starve to death, but for the rest of us sane people, I'd like to prevent that kind of thing even in its less extreme forms.
But thanks for once again reminding why despite feeling strongly affiliated with the principles of Libertarianism i could never, ever call myself one because of just how insane those principles are when taken to the extreme, and just how willing people are to take them to that extreme.
Slashdot Mirror
But I think the problem in Iraq isn't that the soldier shouldn't have non-lethal options. Its that the soldier shouldn't be a cop (special forces, etc. notwithstanding.)
/forehead slap
Absolutely. The lack of trained MPs has been one of the major criticisms I've had of the Iraq plan ever since the conventional war ended. Of course Rummy wasn't expecting to actually have to stick around long enough to do police work, so why should he need MPs?
I do agree that the Iraqi government is unable to keep any semblance of order right now.
Unable or unwilling? When we tried to stop the killings being perpetrated by Madhi Army militias, we were rebuked by Maliki, who depends on Sadr for political support and whose own party has the Badr Brigade militia which has also been accused of sectarian killing. The government is part of the problem not in the sense of incompetence but in the sense of complicity.
I have no problems ousting Hussein from power, it should have been done long ago.
The ideal time to do it would have been right after Gulf War I, when we told the people of Iraq that we would help them if they revolted against Saddam. An actual rebellion supported by the U.S. would have been a billion times better than an invasion by our military, because it truly would have put us in the role of savior rather than occupier. Sort of the difference between France helping the Colonial Army substantially in deafating the British, versus the French Army landing on shore and taking over, promising to eventually let us set up our own government.
Hindsight is 20/20, can't change the past, I know, I know, but the point is there was a time and a place and we missed it. 2003 was not the right time, it was in many ways the worst possible time. For example, it diverted us from Afghanistan, a much better and more important mission. After we were successful in Afghanistan and had pulled our troops out, both freeing up our resources and proving to the world that we could actually do what we said we could do, then we should have considered Iraq.
Leaving right now, I believe, will make Iraq much more of a bloodbath than it already is. Surely, there have been many mistakes, but there is no reason to just add another one to it.
I agree completely that leaving now will cause the violence to get much worse, and thus I am unable to support bringing the troops home immediately.
Here's the problem:
I have seen nothing -- certainly not Bush's "surge" plan which amounts to "stay the course, only harder" -- that will make the statement "leaving now will cause the violence to get much worse" untrue in one year, two years, or ten years.
So I'm starting to lose patience. I'm starting to think that the only thing that will change in however many years we stay is that the body count will be higher and the sectarian hatred even more entrenched. It's starting to seem that no matter what the U.S. is going to have a long post-vietnam-like period of recovery and Iraq is going to have a civil war with its own decades or more of recovery. Unless real hope for success appears, then it only makes sense to start this sooner rather than later. Otherwise we're only building up pressure behind the dam that is going to break eventually no matter what.
You are extremely naive if you think it comes down to that simple binary choice.
Hint: Consider cases where someone would not use lethal force, but would be willing to use non-lethal high-pain-inflicting force. In law enforcement, that's a larger percentage of cases than where lethal force is used -- even if the non-lethal weapon isn't available.
I'm going to guess you are now going to oppose spoons being allowed to the military.
That's because you're a fool who hasn't listened to a word that I've said.
I oppose spoons being given to the military for the express purpose of being used as torture devices. The day I see riot police brandishing spoons and threatening to harm protestors with them is the day your argument makes a god-damn lick of sense.
This weapon is not some random tool like a tape measure or a screwdriver that could hypothetically be re-purposed for torture, it is a torture device as designed and when used as intended. That is its function -- inflicting pain on human beings en mass and from a distance.
For cops, lethal weapons are used rarely (or supposed to be...) and subdued means constrained by handcuffs... for a soldier subdued means dead.
That's a fine point, but in Iraq our soldiers have become de-facto cops by necessity. And they have certainly subdued plenty of people without killing them; we aren't filling the detention centers with corpses. This is good because we're trying to establish order and you don't do that by shooting anyone who steals a pair of sneakers, but it's bad because it means that we're giving this weapon to people who lack the training a traditional police officer gets that at least in theory would make them more reluctant to escalate to a pain-inflicting device. If they're used to thinking in terms of lethal force, they would consider a mere pain-ray a complete non-issue and I imagine would be even more ready to use it than a police officer.
Soldiers in a battlefield are one thing -- and they probably wouldn't use this weapon. Soldiers patrolling the streets of an occupied city are no different than cops, only more heavily armed and less well trained. I don't see this weapon helping the situation.
Which it isn't.
But I'm going to put you in the "oppose any new weapon almost on principle" group I mentioned in my first post.
Because you can quibble about the word "standard"? Are you really saying this falls in the same category as soap in a sock? It's intended use is to inflict pain, and will be delivered to police and soldiers for that express purpose!
You're just putting yourself in the "pigeon hole all opponents without even reading their posts" group. "On principle" my ass. Read my post. There are legitimate reasons to be worried about a weapon like this, you're the one with the knee-jerk reaction.
I'm wondering who's the genius who thinks black ice slows vehicles.
Okay, if you deploy it in front of a turn you can make them crash, but if that's your goal sever tire damage strips or just shooting at the tires would work just as well. Or hell, shoot the driver, unless you're so confident in the general use of airbags that you consider making someone in a high speed chase crash qualifies as "non-lethal force".
Of course, we did not expect the dictator to be replaced by general chaos,
Of course there were two sets of reasoning behind the expectation, and it is the difference between them that has led to this sorry affairs.
We, the people expected that there would not be general chaos because we also expected that the military had a plan for maintaining order while working as quickly as possible to fill the power vacuum.
The architects of the war, specifically Donald Rumsfeld, expected there would not be general chaos because he also expected that a fully-formed democracy would fall from the sky, everyone would love us unconditionally, there wouldn't be an insurgency, and therefore he didn't need to have that plan thingie.
Not that everything would have been open arms and roses if we had an actual plan based in reality, but we might not be describing the situation as "general chaos". The damage done to the Iraq war by Rumsfeld is incalculable, and it doesn't matter how much better Gates is, he can't undo that damage. Bush and military leaders are talking about how we can't afford to fail. Well, sorry boys, we failed three years ago when some moron stood on a ship with a big banner that said "Mission Accomplished", and he believed it.
So your objection is that it might be used for torture? Do you also object to batteries? Water and seranwrap? A long sock with a bar of soap in it? Any tool can be misused, that doesn't detract from it's benefits.
As standard-issues police/MP armaments? FUCK YES I OBJECT. We're not talking about a generic "tool", we're talking about something specifically designed to be a weapon, given to the police for that express puprose. If a cop was caught walking around with a bar of soap in a sock, there might be some questions asked. But his microwave torture device? He's supposed to have that.
There'll be plenty of other posts on the subject, just like there were in the last article on this weapon, but I'll say it again: The difference between a lethal and non-lethal weapon is not just that you'd rather have the non-lethal weapon used on you, it's also that the police are vastly more likely to use the non-lethal weapon on you!
Especially a weapon that leaves no marks, and thus no proof after the fact that the weapon was in fact used. You don't think that'll be used more recklessly by police than their sidearm any use of which requires extensive justification and accounting for every shot fired? "Huh, those protestors said we used our microwave pain rays? They're lying! Just like they're lying about the first guy to throw a rock being a plain-clothes cop!"
This isn't someone re-purposing a bar of soap and a gym sock as a torture device -- which, if a cop was found walking around with and using, would cause some questions to be asked. This tool's benefit is the same as its downside.
No comment on whether they did the job right, they might suck at it and this could all be their fault, I'm just saying that as a practical matter they have to support the inputs that devices people will want to hook up will output. Anyone with a PS3 obviously isn't turned off by DRM on principle, and it would be foolish of Westinghouse not to support HDCP. They don't only support HDCP, they support multiple inputs, again for practical reasons. They don't seem to really care about DRM, either, other than they need it to support customers' other electronics. According to the summary:
"[Westinghouse had] one suggestion for PS3 owners with blinking Westinghouse televisions: Purchasing an HDMI to DVI adapter to bypass HDCP."
Um, WHAT?! You mean all you need to get around all this DRM HDCP is a $30 adapter? Not that DRM has ever been something that will do more than stop the most casual of pirates, but even a casual pirate could see $30 to be able to rip all the HD movies they rent from Netflix or whatever makes sense -- just like people bought $30 adapters that stripped Macrovision from VHS. Am I missing something? Tell me I am, because that's just ridiculous for all this bullshit. It'd be like an Express line at airport security where for a small fee you bypass the scanners.
At EBStop just ask for the controller. They can't leave it just lying out since it's, you know, wireless. It would be stolen within hours.
:)
So are the xbox and ps3 controllers, but they manage to attach a cable to them so they don't walk away. It's not the same, but you should still be able to get a feel for it, but whatever, I'll ask next time I'm there.
You're assuming that PS3s are currently selling. Everytime I go to BB and EB they have tons of ps3s sitting under the demo machine.
:)
Oh, I'm not assuming that, as my experience is the same. Well, I know for a fact that BB sold at least one PS3 because one day they had 12 and the next they had 11... Anyway, based on sales that seem to have dropped off sharply after Christmas, Sony could already have a price drop in the works. They just aren't going to tell us until it's weeks away.
People are either playing guitar hero on the ps2, the wii (if they have a demo), or whatever titles the xbox360 is demoing.
I haven't been anywhere that had an actual Wii demo. Just a Wii console behind plexiglass and a video about how they were going to show me a new way to play video games. Uh, okay, how about letting me actually play and see for myself? I understand people swinging controllers around is an issue, but they have DDR pads and Guitar Hero guitars in little cordoned-off sections. A little dissapointing -- I'm still going to buy one, but even with the great reviews I don't like buying it without trying it.
Oh, and i found an xbox 360 with no disc, just some Live Arcade games. I finally found what the big deal was about Geometry Wars. Smash TV on LSD, totally awesome.
The only place you can get non-bundled PS3s right now is supposedly Circuit City online - non of their stores have them instock.
:(
I could walk into Best Buy right now and get one. I went one day, and they had a dozen. I returned the next day -- when a shipment of Wii was supposed to arrive -- and all the Wii had sold in an hour, but they still had 11 PS3.
Online stores do still seem to be in short supply.
The Wii was tough to find until about a week or two ago but now Wiis are everywhere.
Where do you live? All the shops around here sold out of the shipments they got at the start of the week right away, and the online store trackers are only listing Walmart as having their $650 bundle in stock. I wish it was easy to find a Wii.
Oh man, that's a scary thought. I can only see the stories in the Komodo Dragon New Testament, such as Komodo Dragon Jesus Feeds the 3,000... to his Disciples.
Heh. Do they advertise Rayman as 70 games, Monkey Ball as 50 games, and Wario Ware as... however many mini games it has? "Wii + Zelda + 200 games!"
Based on recent behavior you may think that Sony isn't the brightest company in the world, but they certainly know enough to not divulge even a rumor of a price drop until said price drop is imminent. Nobody pre-announces price drops, because the first-order effect of doing so is to reduce your current sales. With PS3s sitting on the shelves, do you think they want to bring sales to a complete halt while people wait for the price break? There are probably enough people doing that already on the assumption that a price drop will occur; that would be everyone if they knew the price was going to drop at a specific point in time.
Now companies do pre-announce price drops near to the actual change, in order to get people who might also be interested in the competitor to wait for their product, but in a narrow enough time window to not significantly harm their own sales at the previous price.
So basically all this means is that Sony is definitely not dropping the price this month. In three months, if they truly aren't selling and Xbox continues to build its lead, then you'll maybe see something.
And I know of no way to purchase it from them, either.
I had a domain name I used for my website, but I let it lapse. My domain registrar was the one who started parking it, and put up the usual generic portal/search engine. And, in the upper right hand corner of the site was an url that said "Buy this domain!" I clicked on the link, and the asking price for the domain had gone from $15 to $1000.
That's right, one grand. Uh-huh. I think not. Fortunately it's just a personal website, not something I run a business from, so I had zero reason to give in to their extortion. I think the thing that bothers me so much about it is that it was my own domain registrar that did it, not some cybersquatter who saw a lapsed domain and bought it up. It was they themselves who saw the opportunity to try to rape me.
I would be fairly sure that GoDaddy is the one doing the parking, as well. It makes sense for them -- the domain has some value to someone, and why let some other squatter get the name at the normal asking price and get to play the extortion game, when they could make that money (and be more efficient at it too, as they know exactly when a domain becomes available).
My theory is that people just like killin' the bad guys so much that they don't see how easy it is for us mistake who the "bad guys" are.
Well yeah, who doesn't like killin bad guys? I used to have the same problems our government is having when I would play Team Fortress. See, the Spy class can make themselves look like any other class and any other team, and they can get inside your base and wreck havok from the inside. So what you did was any time you saw somebody and you weren't sure if they were a bad guy or not, was you shot them. If they bled, they were a bad guy. Simple enough. Kinda seems to be the tack our government is taking. They must have played Team Fortress too.
Now a kink got thrown in the works if the server had team kill enabled, because then the good guys would bleed if you shot them, too. So what you had to do then is wait for them to shoot you back. A spy can't rightly stay disguised if he's shooting, so if they shot you but didn't change teams, then they are a good guy who's pissed because you shot them. Sometimes they'd get quite mad at your false accusation, and keep shooting you until you were dead, which I suppose made them a bad guy, at least until they forgave you.
I wonder if Bush has checked the server settings on the universe.
"America will be much better off after he is gone! Anybody else would be better than him!"
Okay, Universe, I get it, I was wrong. Anybody else who isn't a fascist ass-kisser would be better than Gonzales. I expect this wish to also be perverted and for me to regret saying it three years from now...
So, basically what you're saying is that you have a hard time understanding things that aren't movies, and you get frustrated and angry as a result, but blame the thing you don't understand.
Sounds like a personal problem.
Fantastic post, and I agree completely -- though I am highly skeptical that the "end state" is a world without terrorism and genocide, partly because I'm just cynical but also because we've done such a piss-poor job of preventing it since we first said "Never Again".
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, the sad thing is, that we could combine both your very lucid statement that global security and thus military spending is necessary and good to pursue, and the GP's request that we stop spending so much money killing and instead spend it fixing our energy dependency problem in a real way.
Just by getting rid of the foolish mission -- Iraq, of course -- and diverting the same amount of money to doing as much as possible to replace fossil fuels, we could basically accomplish what the GP wanted, and still spend the necessary money for military missions that are actually worthwhile, like Afghanistan.
So we don't really have to do either-or, we just have to be smarter. Well, smarter and more concerned about our future. The other sad truth is that in peace time we would never spend Iraq-level monies on developing non-fossil energy because of the obvious strain on our governments budget and the economy such spending causes. Only war can get us to open our purses that wide...
P.S. I just wanted to congratulate Canada and Canadians on their excellent discernment in when and how to cooperate with the U.S. in the Global War on Terror -- for example, by identifying when a mission has something to do with the GWT, and when it has fuck-all to do with Terror (until after we invade and then it has a lot to do with Terror).
Ahh... I see you suggest modern nuclear power plants.
Did you know that archaic nuclear power plants
I appreciated that. Unofficial +1, Funny for you!
No, it's not--desirable end results are none of government's concern.
Well they're my concern, and unlike your hypothetical corporate-run universe, in my world the government works on my behalf. So yes, desireable end results are the governments concern.
Desirable end results are not a corporations concern, as what is desireable from the peoples' standpoint usually means less-than-ideal profit for the corporation.
Then you are pure evil and have no moral right to exist, because you are willing to endorse the wholesale violation of individual rights.
You only believe in the rights of those with the wealth to pay for them, and you're calling me evil? You endorse the wholesale enslavement of the populace in the name of corporate profit, dress it up as "individual rights" -- which to you means the right to own slaves, so long as they can be coerced into agreeing to it under pain of starvation -- and think you have a moral leg to stand on?
Lasse-Faire capitalism is the same as corporate dictatorship. One leads into the other as naturally as water running downhill. You will have no individual rights, because you will sign them away and become a slave to corporate-owned society -- or die. And this is what you wish for. Seriously, that's despicable.
That antitrust scrutiny is there for a reason, and in this case, it's very well justified.
You make some very good points and I lean toward agreeing with you, but at the same time, I'm not quite certain.
For instance, why is AM/FM radio not considered a legitimate competitor to satellite? Considered as a single "radio" market, neither XM nor Sirrius have significant marketshare, nor would they after a merger (well, I assume, I have no numbers, but I also have only one aquaintence with satellite radio). Sure it's good to have competition between satellite services, but for anyone considering purchasing either they would surely consider staying with traditional radio. Even if there was only one satellite service, it would have to make a compelling case vs cheap AM/FM radios with free service.
Whether or not monopolies are "good for consumers" is irrelevant.
It's not government's place to care.
Actually anti-trust is one of the few legitimate places for the government to care. Fixing the fundamentally broken corner-cases of capitalism is a fine use of government power.
All government needs to do is enforce contracts that any given set of individuals choose to make among themselves and arrest and punish those who initiate, attempt to initiate, or threaten to initiate physical force or fraud against the person or property of another without his consent.
Okay, maybe your idea of utopia is where all food manufacturers are bought by wal-mart and the contract you "choose" to sign with them is whatever the hell they want because your choice is to sign or starve to death, but for the rest of us sane people, I'd like to prevent that kind of thing even in its less extreme forms.
But thanks for once again reminding why despite feeling strongly affiliated with the principles of Libertarianism i could never, ever call myself one because of just how insane those principles are when taken to the extreme, and just how willing people are to take them to that extreme.